


On the Cutting Room Floor

by EmeraldHeiress



Series: Shards of Kyber [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Force Suppression (Star Wars), Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Laboratories, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Slavery, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27034186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldHeiress/pseuds/EmeraldHeiress
Summary: Obi-Wan had lost track of how long they had been here. The never-changing flicker of the fluorescent lights and the unpredictable time periods they were pulled from their cots made sure of that.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Shards of Kyber [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847170
Comments: 29
Kudos: 131
Collections: New SW Canon Server Works





	On the Cutting Room Floor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SupermopTheOmoptiant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SupermopTheOmoptiant/gifts).



Obi-Wan had lost track of how long they had been here. The never-changing flicker of the fluorescent lights and the unpredictable time periods they were pulled from their cot made sure of that.

Reality warped in this place. Time on the table stretched around them — experiments and needles. Light glinting of the blades of scalpels as they slid across flesh. As his skin peeled back from muscle, muscle from bone, midichlorian-rich blood spilling across the floor.

Tests to see what made them Force sensitive. What made them different. Why manipulate the current of the universe. ~~To make themselves stronger, faster, better.~~

Thin metal collars wrapped around their throats. Seamless to their eyes and the delicate tips of their fingers. Cutting them off from the Force. From the very thing that could save them. The power to escape.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

An emptiness. An apathy.

Obi-Wan didn’t see the point of meditation anymore but would sit with Qui-Gon when he did so. Followed his directions. He was still his master, after all, and Obi-Wan was still a padawan. No matter how useless such designations seemed now.

They ran through what katas they could in the cramped space of their prison.

When they were tired, he and Qui-Gon curled up together on the thin mat they were given — trying to find rest in the small cell. Five walls of metal and one of glass. Cold and clinical. Hoping they were keeping some semblance of a schedule.

Everything blended together.

Was this even life, anymore? Lab rats in a cage. To be a Jedi was to live a life of service and compassion. That compassion and care learned at the knee of the créchemaster and their teachers.

He’d have thought the endless march of death around him, the endless experiments and pain and knives cutting into skin would have hammered in these lessons. The slaves bought to line the conveyor belt from the surgery to the crematorium — at the whim of the scientists — should have tugged on his heartstrings more and more with each passing day. And it had, at first.

Yet now… Obi-Wan had never felt more numb

A scream startled Obi-Wan out his musings.

That wasn't entirely unusual in this place. With its false white walls, aching with faux serenity. The scent of disinfectant barely covered the scent of blood in the air. Screams weren't out of place. But this one was different.

It came again and Obi-Wan strained to look, peering futilely past the edge of the durasteel of their cell window. That voice — it was young. _Too young_. Echoing off the halls, clear and shrill and so very _small_. Something in Obi-Wan's chest clenched.

The air vibrated around him and he ached to reach out with the Force. To feel what it was trying to tell him.

There was a soft sound as Qui-Gon rose from the cot to join him.

“Tell me that's not a child.” His master pleaded, voice low and weary; lacking any real hope. All hope they’d had once was gone. It had drained out of them with the endless march of the tables and the blade and the not-quite-days of this place. They knew better than to hope now.

Sometimes children came. Small and young and near death already. Bought from the auction block. Bought for quick experiments — quick death. Never lively enough to scream like that. Never _alive_ enough for the kind of tests they must be performing.

The kind of tests reserved for _them_.

Obi-Wan reached for Qui-Gon, winding his fingers in the thin fabric of his issued jumpsuit, seeking comfort against the shrill cries slowly dying off. Against the agony and fear he could hear within them.

His master wrapped his arm around his shoulder, the warmth soaking into him as they watched the hall. Watched the door. _Waiting_.

What felt like hours after the screaming finally died, they heard the approach. Bored guards guiding a hover-stretcher. A tiny body covered with a sheet, crimson slowly staining the bleached white.

Obi-Wan felt one of his molars crack.


End file.
